


Whatever Doesn't Kill

by wednesday



Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:40:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23267869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wednesday/pseuds/wednesday
Summary: There might have been any number of reasons for someone from the guard to leave a blade on Geoffrey's desk. None of them would have left him a blade like this, though.
Relationships: Geoffrey McCullum/Jonathan Reid
Comments: 9
Kudos: 158
Collections: All The Nice Things Flash Exchange 2020





	Whatever Doesn't Kill

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linndechir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/gifts).



> Contains some blood and minor knifeplay.

Geoffrey might not have noticed the first gift at all, if it hadn’t been so bloody fancy. There might have been any number of reasons for someone from the guard to leave a blade on his desk. None of them would have left him a blade like this, though – needlessly ornate, silvery and most definitely worth more than anyone sane should ever spend for a single weapon. At least it wasn’t too shiny, and the edges were sharper then he’d expected. Sharper than his razor, even, as he’d found when he’d nicked his palm. 

It was useful enough, so he kept it (and kept it out of sight) and tried very hard not to think about how the hell it could have ended up on his desk. Or who could have left it there. It was stupid of him. He knew better than to ignore such a thing, but he had all manner of more immediate things to worry about. 

The second gift was rather harder to explain away. Not even the flimsiest of excuses would let him pretend in his own head that he didn’t know who the – too fancy, once again – carved wooden box was from, not when inside he found orichalcum powder. He knew only one man, as much as Reid could be called a man, that this gift could be from. 

There were a lot of things he would have been happier not knowing, and rather high among them was the fact that apparently Reid not only knew where the current base of Priwen was located, but also had the means to come and go unnoticed. That the damned leech had used it to leave gifts for Geoffrey didn’t improve his mood at all. It was worse in some ways, than if Reid had used it for something impersonal and beastly, such as attempting to slaughter his men. But he had not, instead he had left a knife and a box of orichalcum, especially for Geoffrey. How he even knew which room was his… Goddamn. 

His first thought, now that Geoffrey was done pretending he didn’t know who was at fault, was that the knife might have been some kind of threat. He didn’t consider it for more than a moment before laughing mirthlessly. Reid had no reason to threaten, when he had already proven he could defeat Geoffrey at his best, while being surprised and nowhere near his best himself. Nor did he need knives for such a thing, being that he had claws and teeth sharper than any blade. 

The box would make no sense in any case – it was only a weapon against Reid and his kind. 

Still, Geoffrey didn’t know what to make of it. He wasn’t going to ask Reid, not after making his best effort at avoiding him after that disaster of a night. 

It hadn’t been a disaster, was the worst part. It had been desperate and unexpected, and blindingly pleasurable, and a mistake. The memory was still strong enough in his mind that Geoffrey couldn’t think on it directly with clear regret, so he tried not to think on it at all. It had been a worse mistake than any other such mistake he’d ever made. He had been tempted by men before; not often, but it had happened. He had certainly never touched a leech, had never wanted to before that night. Before Reid had smiled at him so charmingly, declared the source of the epidemic defeated and somehow caused Geoffrey to forget every reason he shouldn’t let a leech get so close. 

He might have blamed it on the flash of gratefulness, but he’d been grateful before and never fucked anyone because of it. Fuck, he really needed to stop thinking about it. What was done was unfortunately done. 

Only now Reid seemed to not have the good sense to forget it and pretend he’d never met Geoffrey in his life like he was supposed to. 

Geoffrey pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose and tried to will away his headache. Curse that damned leech, Geoffrey was keeping the orichalcum and first chance he got, he was going to throw a handful in Reid’s face. 

The third gift wasn’t a gift at all. 

Geoffrey had gone on a mission with some of his men, a skal nest in an abandoned building they’d kept a watch on for some time, when it turned out there were a lot more of the things than they had expected, and the leech that had made them as well. It almost looked like an ambush, and it would have been a good one except for one thing. By the time Geoffrey broke down the door, all the leeches were already dead. His men walked hesitantly amidst the bodies and checked them all with some confusion on their faces. There were claw marks on most of them, and a few had been torn apart by some leech magic. The men were content to know some other leech had done them a favor and slightly worried about being unable to track said leech down too. 

Geoffrey didn’t say a thing about it, but he was damn sure the leech responsible was at that very moment in the Pembroke hospital. He knew Reid had gone out of his way to thin the number of skals at the height of the epidemic, but he didn’t believe it to be any coincidence that Reid had chosen to resume that habit just when Geoffrey was about to walk into a trap. He wasn’t sure if he was more grateful or annoyed. 

Still, all he could do was avoid Reid and curse Reid’s inability to do the same to him. 

The fourth gift was a book, which Geoffrey might have thrown into the fire in his anger at still having no idea how Reid bypassed every protection on the building and on Geoffrey’s room in particular, had he not noticed its age. Or so he told himself when he hesitated before the fireplace as his curiosity got the better of him. What book could Reid possibly give Geoffrey and more importantly, _why_? 

The answer to the first only made the second question more urgent in his mind – the book was a detailed account of all kinds of leech magic, how it worked and how to combat it. It had been written by some ancient leech, of course, but the information in it, the advantage it could give the guard was more than enough to dissuade him from destroying it. 

Once again, he wondered why Reid would give it to him. (Why give him anything at all?) Was it some attempt at mocking Geoffrey’s skill at hunting leeches? But as before, the outcome of their one fight would have been enough fodder for all the mockery Reid could possibly want to inflict. And Geoffrey had to admit to himself grudgingly that even as a leech, Reid didn’t seem the kind to stoop to that. If he had been, he would have had more to hold over Geoffrey’s head than his _fighting skills._

The book might have been an attempt at sabotage, but a lot of it was easy to verify and some of it was knowledge they already had. 

It didn’t bring him any closer to understanding the reason behind Reid’s recent madness, so he let it be. Whatever the reason, he now had another weapon against leeches. 

The next gift was when Geoffrey finally ran out of luck at avoiding Reid. 

It was a night like any other, up until Reid appeared out of thin air in the middle of Geoffrey’s room. His back was to Geoffrey where he was sitting on his bed, and he seemed to think he was alone. He put something on Geoffrey’s desk. Geoffrey cleared his throat, not very loudly, but of course Reid with his inhuman senses heard him. 

The way Reid jumped and the speed with which he about-faced, made Geoffrey think of a startled cat. He didn’t put much effort into hiding his amusement. Reid did look guilty as if he’d been caught at something nefarious. 

“Ah, McCullum. I didn’t...” Reid trailed off and it looked like for once he found it difficult to keep looking Geoffrey in the eye. 

“Didn’t hear my heartbeat?” It was a nice little trick from the book Reid had left him last time he’d been here. Geoffrey had expected Reid to have some way to bypass it, but apparently he really was either stupid or overconfident enough to give that kind of advantage to an enemy. 

“Indeed.” 

“What are you doing here?” Geoffrey both wanted and dreaded to find out the reason for Reid’s new obsession with trespassing. 

“Well,” Reid tilted his head towards the desk and left his answer at that. It was long past a time when Geoffrey could have convincingly pretended he didn’t know the mysterious source of the gifts. 

Reid seemed to regain his usual calm fast enough, and then just as fast he took in the sight of Geoffrey sitting on a bed and… There was a glint in his eyes that Geoffrey recognized, despite only having seen it once before. In an attempt to put an end to that line of thought Geoffrey got up, not that standing next to a bed would be much different from being on it. Reid was – whatever he was doing here, it wasn’t that. 

“What is that?” Geoffrey asked, and stepped around Reid to get a better look at whatever was on his desk. “If you’ve brought me a dead bird...” 

When Geoffrey realized what Reid’s gift was, he wished he hadn’t said anything. It was a weapon again, a crossbow, but ridiculously ornate. The handle was inlaid with silver and covered in decorative swirls and engraved with flowers of all things. He couldn’t pretend it was anything but– No. 

Reid was watching him with badly concealed excitement and expectation, like Geoffrey’s reaction mattered to him. “This isn’t...” Geoffrey rubbed the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes for a few moments. There were a lot of things this wasn’t, and most of all it wasn’t supposed to be anything. Even if he hadn’t been a leech, Reid was a man and he should have known better than to... 

Geoffrey could not believe he had managed to put himself in a place where he’d have to turn down a very misguided attempt at courting by a leech. He didn’t _want_ to believe it. He should have killed Reid. He should have tried again and again until he succeeded, and he should have never ever gotten so turned around by that smile and those hands and… Fuck. Maybe he was severely misunderstanding everything. 

“What do you want, Reid? What is this?” He waved his hand at the crossbow sitting on his desk and looking about as innocent as a snake poised to strike. 

“It is yours, though I had the damage repaired. It seemed fair, given that I was the one to break it.” 

Geoffrey frowned and looked at the crossbow again. There was a notch on one of the limbs, smoothed out now, but still recognizable. It was the same crossbow he’d lost that day at Pembroke, during his fight against Reid. His last memory of it was Reid ripping it away with the very clear sound of wood splintering. He hadn’t even tried to find it afterwards, too angry and confused at Reid and in too much pain to care. And now here it was, repaired and covered in flowers. 

“And the book?” 

“The previous owner did plan to kill you, I thought it fitting that it should be yours.” Reid was smiling now, clearly enjoying Geoffrey’s rising annoyance at him. He didn’t bother asking about the leeches, he knew Reid would have some bland excuse about keeping order in the city. He’d already admitted to knowing about the attempted trap, which left no doubt he had also been the one to kill them all. 

“The previous owner of the orichalcum did as well, as I remember.” He should have been angrier at all of this, though really, he was plenty angry, but some of Reid’s amusement was catching, or perhaps Geoffrey was still stunned by the insanity of it all. 

“Memory problems are quite common, more so than people realize; I assure you, it’s nothing to worry about.” Reid stepped closer, and reached out, put his hand against Geoffrey’s side. Even through his shirt he felt the unnatural coolness of Reid’s skin. 

That touch, barely indecent, but very deliberate, was as clear a sign as anything that to Reid this was something. That he expected this game of his to get him into Geoffrey’s pants again. 

When Geoffrey didn’t answer, Reid tried to step even closer, and in a flash Geoffrey had a blade pressed to Reid’s neck. Reid froze, though his smile remained, as did the hand on Geoffrey’s side. He could have avoided the position; Geoffrey didn’t fool himself into thinking he could draw any weapon fast enough for Reid to not escape. Yet Reid had allowed it. 

“What about this?” Geoffrey asked. It was the same knife Reid had left for him. 

Reid glanced down, but the blade was too close to his skin to be easily visible. He must have known what it was anyway, but he didn’t provide any excuse for this gift. 

“Reid,” Geoffrey said, and turned the knife so the point of the blade was digging into Reid’s skin, “What. Do. You. _Want_?” He increased the pressure with every word until a drop of blood slid down the side of Reid’s neck. The cut healed almost instantly. Reid, however, hadn’t moved an inch. He hadn’t disappeared in a mess of shadows, hadn’t clawed Geoffrey’s throat out, hadn’t even disarmed him. 

Instead Reid stood still, though his eyes had darkened and the expression on his face was wilder than just moments ago. He smiled, his fangs sharp and much too close. Geoffrey couldn’t help his instinctive flinch at the sight. 

He pressed on the knife again, and another bright red drop of blood slowly rolled down and stained the collar of Reid’s shirt. 

Reid was allowing all of this, Reid, who had given Geoffrey half a dozen different weapons to be used against him. He already knew Geoffrey was the way he was and wanted what he shouldn’t want. There was no reason to pretend. (There were a hundred reasons, and Geoffrey didn’t think about any of them.) 

Without letting go of the knife, Geoffrey leaned closer and kissed Reid. Reid didn’t hesitate for a second, he kissed back, bit Geoffrey’s lips just hard enough to hurt without breaking the skin. Ignoring the blade still in Geoffrey’s hand, Reid pulled him closer. 


End file.
